Japanese drama commenced around the 7th century and to date has evolved a wide variety of genres characterised generally by the fusion of dramatic, musical, and dance elements. The music and dance, as well as the subjects, settings, costumes, and acting styles, were rigidly stylised and, until recent times, offered relatively few realistic or naturalistic qualities. Some genres utilise almost exclusively a fixed repertoire of plays, often many centuries old. The earliest known type of Japanese theatrical entertainment is gigaku, which was introduced into Japan in 612 from southern China; it is thought to have been ultimately of Indian or possibly even of Greek origin. Gigaku dances, performed with masks, seem to have been humorous. In the 8th century gigaku fell into disfavour because its frivolous character displeased the Japanese rulers of the period. It was supplanted largely by bugaku, an entertainment introduced from China. Bugaku dances portrayed simple situations such as the return of a general from war.
The performers wore impressive robes, and their dances had exotic splendour. Japanese rulers, intent on imitating Chinese courtetiquette, favoured bugaku, both because of its solemnity and because of its similarity to Chinese court entertainments, and it quickly acquired a ritual character. Bugaku may now be seen only at ceremonies. A type of acrobatic entertainment known as sangaku, transmitted similarly to Japan from the Asian continent and popular in the 8th century, also influenced Japanese drama. Typical acts included tightrope walking, juggling, and sword swallowing. A Combination of these secular entertainments and the sacred dances and songs associated with the Shinto religion gradually evolved into more complex forms of drama. Surviving documents from the 11th century describe comic playlets, and one play still performed, the ritual dance Okina, may date from this period.
Plays were also performed at shrine festivals in support of prayers for harvests or to depict the history of the shrine. The actors and musicians were organised into troupes. By the 14th century the theatre had developed one of its foremost artistic achievements, No drama. These plays included solemn dances intended to suggest the deepest emotions of the principal character and were written in the poetic language of the Japanese classics. A program also often included kyo gen, or farces written in colloquial language. No was brought to the level of great art by the genius of two dramatists, Kanami Kiyotsugu and his son Zeami Motokiyo. No was patronised by the Ashikaga shogunate after a shogun saw the boy Zeami perform in 1374. Zeami developed No into refined aristocratic drama, but after his death it tended to lose its creative vitality and become ritualistic. Many No plays performed at present are by Zeami, and his books of criticism are considered the final authority on the subject.
For a short period after the Meiji restoration in 1868, No was threatened with extinction because of its connections with the discredited shogunate. It survived the threat, however, and thereafter enjoyed popularity with specialised audiences. An entire program of No drama traditionally consists of five No plays in poetry with music and four kyo gen farces in prose without music, performed alternately. Kyogen farces feature representational acting, and the actors wear neither masks nor makeup. No plays avoid representational accuracy in favour of a symbolic treatment of subjects concerning the worlds of the living and the dead. The principal types of No plays are those dealing with deities, the ghosts of warriors, women with tragic destinies, mad persons, and devils or festive spirits. The actors, who often wear masks, are richly and elaborately costumed. The No drama is performed in a theatre with a roofed stage. The audience is seated on two or, less commonly, three sides of the stage. The actors reach the stage by a passageway, called the bridge, which is marked by three pine trees. The only backdrop is a large painted pine. The scenery consists entirely of impressionistic props suggesting the outlines of a building, a boat, or any other object of importance to the play. Only male actors perform in No dramas. When they play the roles of women or of men whose age is markedly different from their own, they wear masks, many of which are exceptionally beautiful. The No drama also includes a chorus that sits at one side of the stage and recites for the actors when they dance, but the chorus has no identity in the drama. Full programs are seldom presented any longer, but kyo gen continues to be an indispensable part of the entire performance, for it presents the humorous aspects of life with which No is never concerned.
At the end of the 15th century two new popular forms appeared; they were the puppet theatre, jo ruri, also called bunraku, and a form known as kabuki. The puppet theatre combines three elements: the puppets; the chanters who sing and declaim for the puppets; and the players of the samisen, a three-stringed instrument, who provide the accompaniment. The greatest Japanese dramatist, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, wrote chiefly for the puppet theatre, the artistic level of which is perhaps higher in Japan than anywhere else in the world. The puppet theatre, after attaining its greatest popularity in the 18th century, lost in public favour to the kabuki, which has continued to be the most popular traditional dramatic genre. By the mid-1980s kabuki was popular with American audiences, and troupes made annual appearances in the USA Kabuki tends to be spectacle rather than drama. Original kabuki texts, as opposed to those adapted from the puppet theatre, are of lesser importance than the remarkable acting, the music and dance, and the brilliantly collared settings.
Kabuki plays are performed in large theatres, with a hanamichi, or raised platform, extending from the back of the theatre to the stage. In addition to the traditional drama, a modern theatrical repertoire consisting of original Japanese plays in a modern idiom and of translations of European plays has been active in Japan since the beginning of the 20th century. Some 20th-century playwrights have attempted to compromise between traditional Japanese forms and essentially Western idioms, either by introducing modern psychology into their treatment of the ancient tales or by making kabuki-style plays out of such European classics as Shakespeare's Macbeth. Highly successful modern presentations of traditional themes are offered in Five Modern No Plays (1956) by Mishima Yukio. Other plays, notably Twilight Crane, produced in 1949, by Kinoshita Junji, are derived from old folktales. Many contemporary Japanese playwrights deal with such themes as conflict in modern Japanese society and problems of social injustice; other playwrights prefer to work out Japanese equivalents of modern symbolic drama or of the American musical comedy. Research Japanese Drama
An objective correlative is a concept in drama suggested by T S Eliot in a discussion of Shakespeare' s Hamlet. Recognising that the hero's emotion in the play was excessive and inexplicable, Eliot suggested that dramatists must find an exact, sensuous equivalent, or 'objective correlative', for any emotion they wish to express. He gave an example from Macbeth where Lady Macbeth's state of mind in the sleepwalking scene is communicated to the audience by a skilful building-up of images and actions. Research Objective Correlative
Dimitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer. He was born in 1906 and died in 1975. He composed Symphonies, Lady Macbeth of the District Mzensk. Research Dimitri Shostakovich
John Dennis was an English critic. He was born in 1657 at London and died in 1734. He was, to begin with, a man of independent means, and devoting himself to literature wrote some dramatic pieces and poems, and at length settled down to criticism. His irritability and rancorous criticisms involved him in perpetual broils. He was best known for his quarrels with Alexander Pope. He wrote a stage tragedy for which he devised a form of stage thunder which was later used in a production of Macbeth, in response to which Dennis complained that they had stolen his thunder. Hence the origin of the term to steal one's thunder. Research John Dennis
Macbeth was King of Scotland from 1040 until his death in 1057. Macbeth's story was fictitiously told by William Shakespeare in his play Macbeth. In fact, Macbeth came to power after killing his cousin, Duncan I, in battle near Elgin on August the 14th 1040. He was killed in a battle against Malcolm, the eldest son of Duncan I, who was assisted by the English. Research Macbeth
Malcolm III was King of Scotland from 1057 to 1093. He was born around 1031 and died in 1093. Malcolm III was the eldest son of Duncan I, who was killed by Macbeth. Malcolm III lived in exile in England until defeating and killing Macbeth in 1057, and subsequently ascending the Scottish throne. In 1072 he recognised William I as overlord of England, but in 1093 was killed by William II while making a raid into England. Research Malcolm III
Diana Rigg is a British actress. She was born in 1938 at Yorkshire. She trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at Stratford- on-Avon in 1959 and made her mark shortly thereafter in productions of The Taming Of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Macbeth, and King Lear. Following a year-long stint as Emma Peel in the television series 'The Avengers', she joined the National Theatre, where she played Dottie in Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, Celimene in The Misanthrope, Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion, and Phaedra in Phaedra Britannica. She also starred in Tom Stoppard's 'Night and Day', Antony and Cleopatra, Stephen Sondheim's Follies, and won a Tony Award in 1994 for her Broadway performance in the title role of Medea. Research Diana Rigg
Judith Anderson was an Australian actress. She was born in 1898 and died in 1992. Dame
Judith Anderson (she was knighted in 1960) was for nearly seventy years one of the foremost Shakespearian actresses of the stage, playing everything from Lady MacBeth to Portia to Hamlet. In films, she repeatedly played the role of Cruella DeVil. She made her first film appearance as an incongrously sexy temptress in 1933's 'Blood Money'; seven years later, she essayed her most famous screen role, the obsessed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca produced in 1940. Research Judith Anderson
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